Romney points to fact-checkers, accuses Obama of lying

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney accused President Obama of running a re-election campaign based on lies in a new television ad that stacks the president’s campaign claims up against media and other independent fact-checkers and features an old clip of presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton also claiming Mr. Obama stretched the truth in the campaign four years ago.

The 30-second “No Evidence” ad aims to push back against the Obama camp’s charge that Mr. Romney shipped jobs overseas while he called the shots at Bain Capital. To puncture the Obama claim, the Romney camp pointed to the findings of fact-checkers at The Washington Post who called an Obama campaign ad “misleading, unfair and untrue.”

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“When a president doesn’t tell the truth. How Can We Trust Him To Lead?” Mr. Romney’s ad retorts. His ad also highlights the analysis of Factcheck.org, which found there was “no evidence” that Mr. Romney shipped jobs overseas.

From there, Mr. Romney’s ad jumps to the old video footage of Mrs. Clinton from the 2008 Democratic primary campaign, where she assails Mr. Obama for mailing out campaign fliers that she claimed contained false information. “Shame On You, Barack Obama,” Mrs. Clinton says in the clip.

But Mr. Romney himself has been dinged by fact-checkers. His first ad of the campaign, a 60-second spot called “Believe in America,” featured a video clip of Mr. Obama saying that “if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose” — without clarifying that Mr. Obama was in fact quoting someone from Sen. John McCain’s presidential camp.

Fact-checkers at PolitiFact.com rated the ad “Pants of Fire!” on their truth-o-meter, saying it took Mr. Obama’s words “out of context in a ridiculously misleading way.”